The latest crop of "metaverses" are almost all intertwined with blockchain. It's about buying into the metaverse, buy your plot of land, buy your sneakers, buy your new hairstyle, buy your emote laugh animation. Every possible interaction is monetized. It's baffling, like why would anyone want to spend time in a dystopian capitalism simulator.

VRChat seems to embrace the pure spirit of the thing, from what I can tell as an outsider. People are free to express themselves and be creative, making their own avatars and worlds from scratch if they want. It seems like a wacky hangout space, the whole point is to not have constraints. Trying to turn it into anything beyond that seems like it would fail.

But then again, I also don't understand why people drop thousands of dollars on Fortnite skins. I don't feel out of touch with tech, but this I simply do not get, at all.